Originally Posted by
nkedel
A general CO2 emissions tax would pretty much accomplish the same thing, and scales pretty much linearly with fuel used. Annoyingly, it's a lot trickier to administer, and if you allow for offsets, you need to be very careful that the offsets aren't fraudulent.
A CO2 tax is tantamount to a fuel tax. In fact, it's identical, unless engines are spewing out huge quantities of unburned fuel, or are producing huge quantities of CO.
How about a fuel transfer tax to tax the pumping of liquids onto the aircraft? I don't think that either would pass muster. If a tax is proportional to CO2, it's proportional to fuel used, and thus not legal.